The Ducks, they’re bad! This isn’t anything new or surprising. Anaheim was rated the worst team in 2022, and nothing changed in the opening month of 2023.

Season-wide, the Ducks are one of the worst teams at generating offense at five-on-five and finishing their chances. Defense is a disaster and goaltending hasn’t responded too well to being overloaded with quality looks, either. Anaheim generates only 39 percent of the expected goals share, and the results are even worse at a putrid 36.5 percent. Special teams are a wreck, too.

 

The vibes are sinking for the Ducks

The longer a game progresses, the worse things get for Anaheim. It’s not shocking that the best teams in the league see their goal differential grow as a game progresses, and the worst trend in the opposite direction. But the gap in goal differential for the Ducks in all situations is that bad. Far too often, this team is on the wrong side of a blowout as the viz from Prashanth Iyer depicts (and as per usual, the vibes are impeccable when we get to team up with Prashanth).

NHL
Blackhawks’ Market for Patrick Kane Heating Up with 7 Teams Interested

Despite the team’s current three-game win streak, the month of January has been tough. Anaheim lost 4-1 to the Flyers, 7-1 to the Bruins, 6-2 to both the Oilers and Devils and 6-3 to the Sabres.

That’s been building up all season. Right now, the Ducks’ all-situation goal differential (-80) is the 17th worst since 2000-01 — and they’re only at the 50-game mark. At this rate, they’re on pace to become the worst since the 1999-00 Thrashers.

The bright side? This is a rebuilding team that was expected to be bad, and the worse they get the better their chances are of winning the race for Connor Bedard. Moving players at the deadline should only further that.

The downside? There’s quite a hill to climb from being so drastically bad. Anaheim’s on pace to concede 336 goals this season, and that’s the worst since the Sharks back in 1995-96. With 4.06 goals against per game, the Ducks are currently the worst of any team going back through 1996-97 (funny enough, followed by this year’s Canucks. The vibes are so messy, though, that we’re not even going there). It can be tough to drag players out of such a dismal environment and teach the fundamentals needed to start trending up — even with the prize of Bedard joining as a foundational piece.